Mini hot cocoa cookie mugs are almost too cute to eat

These adorable mugs of hot cocoa are completely edible. Made with sugar cookies and candy canes and filled with a rich chocolate ganache, this might be the sweetest cup of cocoa you have this season.

They also make a wonderfully unique edible gift for friends and family this Christmas.

While they may look complicated, you can actually make these cookie mugs without any special cookie cutters. They’re simply sugar cookie rings stacked on one another to form the cup shape.

Make and chill your sugar cookie dough, then roll it out. You need a circle about 1 inch to 1-1/2 inches in diameter to cut out your circles. This could be a cookie cutter, a tall shot glass or the opening of a bottle. Cut out 4 circles for each cookie. You might need to chill your dough again before rerolling it.

Now you need to cut 3 of every 4 circles into a ring, using something half the width of your original circle. I used a frosting tip. Add the center circles you remove back to your dough ball to cut out more cookies.

After baking the cookies and letting them cool, flip the rings over, and pipe icing on the bottoms, around the inner holes.

Stack the frosted rings on top of a complete circle, making a cup out of 4 cookies.

While the icing holding your mugs together firms up, cut out the mug handles. If you’re having trouble with the crook of the candy cane breaking, then try cutting off the long end first to even out the candy cane, then cutting both ends shorter.

Use some icing to attach the handles to each cookie mug, and let them dry while you make your chocolate ganache.

I made my ganache in a glass measuring cup so I could easily pour it into the cookie mugs. Fill each mug to the top. A little overflow can be OK — I love overflowing hot chocolate!

Pipe a dollop of icing in the center of the ganache for your “whipped cream” topping. I suggest letting the cookies sit for a couple of hours before packaging them to let the ganache set.

Hot cocoa cookie mugs recipe

While this recipe has a lot of pieces, the actual assembling goes pretty quickly, so it’s really quite easy. Feel free to substitute a favorite extract for the vanilla in the cookies; just make sure it’s one that will go well with the chocolate ganache.